Aite Group And Asset Control Addresses Challenges And Opportunities Of Data Integration

A new Aite Group report sponsored by Asset Control, the world wide leader in financial data management solutions, highlights the key obstacles and advantages of integrating data to support a variety of financial institutions business applications and data consumers. The

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A new Aite Group report sponsored by Asset Control, the world-wide leader in financial data management solutions, highlights the key obstacles and advantages of integrating data to support a variety of financial institutions business applications and data consumers. The report, Integration: Data Managements Last Mile, also presents best practices for addressing data integration challenges.

The credit crisis brought the need for effective data management to the forefront, as data management and integration have become crucial for financial institutions to understand and report on risk exposure quickly and correctly. While data management has focused heavily on acquisition and normalization, the challenges of delivering quality data to the right users and applications in a timely manner continue to plague firms resources, time to market, and ability to meet business objectives. Here are some of the key findings of the report:

Firms will spend $1.76 billion on data integration alone in 2010, not including point-to-point data integration which can be another large part of a firms budget.

Large sell-side firms report data management staff of more than 50 people supporting upwards of 100 applications, while medium and smaller firms have staffs in the 5-15 person range supporting from 5 to 15 applications.

Many application implementations fall short of expectations due to lack of or poor quality data, resulting in the need to develop workarounds and other shortcuts, or pulling back the scope of the project.

Data integration is a key step in successful application implementations and data management projects, enabling business applications to realize their full potential in supporting key business drivers and objectives, says Fritz McCormick, senior analyst at Aite Group and author of the paper. However, many firms models are difficult to maintain and virtually impossible to scale. Effective data integration has a significant impact on the operational integrity of the firm and its ability to mitigate errors in the trading process.

Firms can overcome data integration challenges by implementing best practices, such as developing strong partnerships with business users, establishing realistic service-level expectations, and implementing a response mechanism that audits data usage within the application, says Phil Lynch, Asset Controls president and chief executive officer. Data integration should be part of a firms decision making and analysis at the start of the project to minimize the substantial cost of integration.

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